“We are concerned that if the Department does not make decisions based on evidence, it instead risks making them on anecdote, assumption and prejudice. Worryingly, it has no idea of what impact it has achieved for the £400 million [$519 million] spent each year by its Immigration Enforcement directorate,” the public accounts committee said.
According to the report, the lawmakers that conducted the study also found that the Home Office does not understand the size and scale of the illegal population and the extent and nature of any resulting harm.
“It does not understand the support people need to navigate its systems effectively and humanely, or how its actions affect them,” it added.
On Brexit, the committee concluded that the Home Office has shown a “worryingly lack of urgency” about securing agreements with EU partners to deal with foreign national offenders and individuals arriving in the UK from the European area once the UK completes its departure from the bloc on 31 December.
Without putting new arrangements in place successfully, there is a real risk that the EU exit will actually make it more difficult to remove foreign national offenders and those who try to enter the country illegally.
Commenting on the report, Labour lawmaker Meg Hillier, who chairs the public accounts committee, accused the Home Office of having “frighteningly little grasp of the impact of its activities in managing immigration.”
“It shows no inclination to learn from its numerous mistakes across a swathe of immigration activities – even when it fully accepts that it has made serious errors,” she added, as quoted on the committee’s press release.
The parliamentary committee has given the Home Office six months to present a detailed plan with set priorities and deadlines to correct its mistakes.
